CHAPTER 319: WAKE UP!

"Okay... this is new," Victor muttered while scanning his surroundings.

To his left stood several statues with humanoid figures worn down by time, just like he had seen in so many places initially.

Some had strange inscriptions along their bases, glowing faintly red as though the symbols themselves were breathing.

On his right, long slithering vines crawled over the ground. They moved in slow waves, like lazy serpents half-asleep. Every few seconds, one would curl around a rock or a broken spear, as if testing what was alive and what wasn’t.

A few palm-sized insects buzzed past him, their translucent wings flickering green. They circled him once, then darted off toward the statues.

"Yup. Totally normal. Nothing suspicious about glowing vines and cursed statues at all."

He looked ahead. Still the same bleak horizon. No movement, no ruins... just more ooze, more emptiness.

The only true difference was the temperature.

Victor stood there for a while, rubbing his chin.

"Should I...?"

He considered activating his Void Emperor Bloodline and using one of its abilities that allowed him to hyper-focus his vision far into the distance... almost two thousand feet ahead.

It would be incredibly useful, but the qi drain wasn’t something to joke about.

He was trying to lower the expenditure of his qi as much as he could so he stopped himself.

"Nope. Not worth it. Not wasting qi for a sightseeing trip."

He sighed deeply while lowering his hand. His reflection rippled faintly on the goo covered ground, distorted and ghostly.

"Another day, another waste," he muttered under his breath.

He turned around with hands behind his head as he started heading back.

"West, north, and south still left. Great. My life has officially turned into a fetch quest."

...

...

Victor sat on a rough slab of rock, surrounded by nothing but the endless purple haze of the barren terrain.

At this point, almost three weeks had already gone by. He still hadn’t found food, shelter or a way back.

He still always found his way back to the same point he and Commander Aiz spawned from, hoping he’d spot a clue that he initially missed.

Unfortunately, it was futile.

His uniform was still torn and charred in several places. Dust had worked its way into the cracks of his lips, and his tongue felt like leather.

With nothing edible in sight, his eyes drifted again and again to the unmoving corpse beside him.

Commander Aiz.

Even in death, the Drakenar looked terrifying. His muscles which were once as hard as spirit-forged iron, had softened only slightly. His mangled flesh was pale but unblemished.

Even now, his corpse wasn’t rotten.

Victor guessed that the decay was very slow due to how powerful the Drakenar used to be when he was alive. His corpse even seemed to emanate a faint, oppressive aura that troubled Victor.

He was well aware that he would never have been able to defeat Commander Aiz, if the powerful Drakenar hadn’t followed him into the space time continuum and gotten trapped there.

However, this was the last thing on his mind right now...

Currently, his hunger had gotten him to a point where he could no longer think properly any more.

And hunger... hunger made a man do insane things.

Victor’s eyes flicked from the corpse to his trembling hands. "No way... absolutely not..." he muttered to himself. "That’s a whole person... thing... A terrifying one at that. I’m not a beast... I’m not—"

His stomach growled agonizingly like someone twisting a blade in his gut.

He bit his lip. "Okay... maybe just... a small bite. For research purposes. Yeah. Research."

He laughed dryly at his own madness before coughing, nearly choking on his own spit. Then, with a kind of grim acceptance, he dragged himself toward the corpse.

The moment he touched Commander Aiz’s arm, he froze, expecting it to crumble, or perhaps explode but it didn’t. Instead, it felt... dense. Warm, almost.

The flesh of a powerhouse, still infused with lingering mana.

Victor proceeded to start a fire with his dragon breathing, right above one of the rocks settling above the gooey terrain.

He dragged the body closer to the fire and carved a piece from the Drakenar’s shoulder with wind blade.

He grimaced the entire time and roasted it over the flame. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t unbearable either. And the moment the outer flesh turned golden brown, the hunger in Victor’s stomach clawed at his sanity.

He didn’t even wait for it to cool.

~Chop!~

He devoured it.

At first, the taste was bitter but then something strange happened. The more he chewed, the easier it went down.

Warmth began to spread through his body, like liquid fire coursing through his veins. His limbs tingled, and for the first time in days, he didn’t feel like he was about to collapse.

He tore into the meat again, faster this time, until there was nothing left of the portion he’d roasted. Then, like a man waking from a trance, Victor froze. The reality of what he’d just done hit him like a collapsing mountain.

He stumbled back while clutching his stomach. "Oh, hell no... what did I just—" He gagged, turned to the side, and vomited violently.

Chunks of half-digested flesh splattered across the goo covered ground, making his head spin with the smell. "I hope I don’t get sick... that’s disgusting..."

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slumped against the rock again.

His entire body shivered from the horrifying realization that he had just the flesh of a humanoid magical alien.

He laid on his side above the slab of rock and curled inwards in disbelief with his arms wrapped around his knees.

Exhaustion crushed him soon after as the strange energy still coursing through him pulled him into an uneasy sleep.

---

When his eyes opened again, the world was different.

He was no longer in that desolate wasteland but standing beneath a violet sky filled with drifting spirit lights.

A strange and familiar haze spread across the surroundings and faint outlines of mountains could be spotted in the distance. The rivers gleamed like liquid crystal, and the air was filled with qi so dense it felt like silk brushing against his skin. It was an ethereal realm he was very much familiar with.

"Wait... how did I get here again?" he muttered while glancing around. "I didn’t even log into Ascendant Realms..."

Then, out of nowhere, faint golden letters materialized before his eyes.

[ Bloodline Integration: 99.09% ]

[ You Consumed Unknown Humanoid Flesh ]

[ Durability Improved ]

Victor’s jaw dropped. "What in the—since when do I get notifications when I stumble into Lingyun Realm in my dreams?!"

He reached out instinctively, trying to swipe them away, but they stayed fixed in the air.

It was different from usual.

His heartbeat quickened. In all his times slipping into Lingyun Realm while unconscious, he’d never seen anything like this before.

Then, a soft voice echoed from behind him.

"You are not bringing out the full potential of your Nascent Soul Realm... You lack insight."

Victor turned around instantly and there stood Lingun, the mysterious spirit that had guided him since his earliest days in Ascendant Realms and taught him how to be a swordsman.

The spirit looked exactly the same as always: dressed in flowing robes of deep azure, eyes that seemed to hold an entire cosmos within them.

"L-Lingun? What do you mean I lack insight?" Victor questioned with an utterly confused look. "I’ve been fighting, lost, nearly starving to death—what insight am I missing, huh?"

Lingun stepped closer with a calm expression. "Power alone is nothing without understanding. You wield techniques of flame, wind, shadow, and frost... yet they remain fragments of your potential. You have yet to unleash the true capabilities of a Nascent Soul Realm Cultivator."

"Okay," Victor responded while scratching his head. "But how exactly am I supposed to ’see’ that? You gonna give me a tutorial or something?"

Lingun’s lips curved slightly, almost amused. "Access your inner bank."

"My what now?"

"Your inner bank," Lingun repeated with his voice echoing slightly, as if the realm itself was amplifying it. "The reservoir where your cultivation essence converges. Reach out to it... unleash it."

Victor frowned while taking a hesitant step forward. "I don’t unders—"

"Wake up," Lingun’s voice boomed suddenly, cutting through the air like thunder.

The world around Victor shattered like glass.

Victor’s eyes snapped open and he was face-to-face with death.

A colossal insect, the size of a truck, perched over him. Its mandibles dripped with green saliva that hissed as it touched the slab of rock Victor was sleeping on, causing a part of it to melt away. Its multi-faceted eyes glowed with an eerie crimson light, and its wings made a low, thrumming sound that rattled his bones.

For a split second, Victor froze, still half trapped between dream and reality. Then his instincts called him to action.

"Crap—NOT the kind of wake-up call I was hoping for!" he shouted while rolling to the side just as the creature’s jaws slammed down where he’d been lying.

The ground rock split open from the force as Victor fell onto the goo covered ground, smearing half of himself in it.

Victor sprang to his feet with qi flaring violently around him.

His hand instinctively flew to his back as he unsheathed his legacy sword in an instant.